Safety on roads is important for everyone, especially when farm equipment is going down a road.
Every year there are about 20 collisions on average between Ag equipment and passenger vehicles in Manitoba.
Renée Simcoe is the Farm Safety Communications Coordinator with the Manitoba Farm Safety Program.
She gave us some safety tips to keep everyone safe when a farmer plans to make a turn.
“If you are planning on making a turn, shut your flashing hazards off for a few seconds before turning on your signal. You want to get the attention of the person following you. If they have been following you for a couple of minutes, even they may stop paying attention to your lights altogether.”
She has some advice for passenger vehicles when they come up behind a slow-moving piece of equipment.
“Pull over, you don’t have to necessarily stop, slow right down if you have to. If there is a nearby approach or road maybe pull over a little bit more and give them that space. A lot of times the roads have steep ditches and if the piece of equipment has to pull right over and one wheel goes into the ditch there could be an incident.”
For equipment drivers the bigger machines have to yield to oncoming traffic and smaller vehicles are not legally obliged to pull over for you, but some do out of courtesy.
She recommends farmers talk with drivers, especially young teenagers and workers about road safety and get their perspective.
